Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering student Jason Zhang has been awarded the UAB Honors College Presidential Summer Fellowship 2020.

Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering student Jason Zhang has been awarded the UAB Honors College Presidential Summer Fellowship 2020 to remotely study the topic of his proposal, “Screening of already-available drugs to target key SARS-CoV-2 proteins and human proteins for COVID-19 treatment.” This will be a computational modeling project. Zhang says through this work he hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the virology and pathology of SARS-CoV-2.

Zhang will receive a stipend of $2,500 and will benefit from Honors College Workshops to develop his scientific communication skills. His research findings will be shared virtually in the UAB Summer Expo, run by the Office of Undergraduate Research, on July 25.

Yuhua Song, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, will supervise Zhang over the course of the summer.

The Presidential Summer Fellowship is generously funded by UAB President Ray Watts, M.D., to promote undergraduate research, creative activity, and engagement among honors students in STEM disciplines. Five Presidential Summer Innovation Fellowships are awarded each year. Recipients are expected to invest a minimum of 30 hours per week to their project for a 12-week period.

Zhang is a junior studying biomedical engineering with a minor in mathematics. He is in the Science and Technology Honors Program within the Honors College and is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society and Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honors Society. He has been studying cell and molecular biology for three years and looks forward to taking his research a step further by applying his engineering background and programming skills in pursuit of possible treatments.